Rishi Sunak faces calls to address a growing Islamophobia controversy, with senior Conservatives condemning the “dangerous” remarks made by the party’s former deputy chair.
Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield, was stripped of the Conservative Party whip after refusing to retract comments suggesting Islamists had gained influence over Sadiq Khan. Anderson asserted on GB News that the London mayor had “handed over” the capital city to his associates.
The comments have sparked demands for the Prime Minister to openly condemn anti-Muslim prejudice and take internal action to address it.
Sayeeda Warsi, a Tory peer and former cabinet minister in David Cameron’s government, urged Rishi Sunak to use clear language in addressing Islamophobia, emphasizing the need to label it as such.
“What is it about the prime minister that he can’t even call out anti-Muslim racism and anti-Muslim bigotry? Why can’t he just use those words?” She told.
In response to whether Sunak should condemn Anderson’s comments as Islamophobia, Warsi affirmed: “Of course he should. If you can’t call racism racism, if you can’t call antisemitism antisemitism, and if you can’t call Islamophobia Islamophobia, then how are we going to fix it?”
In a statement on Sunday, Sunak decried “the explosion in prejudice and antisemitism since the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7” in Israel. He did not explicitly refer to Islamophobia. Khan criticized the prime minister on social media for failing “to mention anti-Muslim hatred at all”.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden expressed his disagreement with Anderson’s comments, stating, “I don’t believe that Lee Anderson said those remarks intending to be Islamophobic.”
A Conservative party source defended the comments on Friday night; however, Anderson was suspended from the party whip on Saturday after refusing to apologize for them.
Paul Scully, the former Tory minister for London, remarked, “We went through all this about Sadiq Khan and his ‘friends’ and all that kind of stuff when Zac Goldsmith was fighting Sadiq [for the mayoralty] the first time. It didn’t work then and it’s not going to work now … It’s just not appropriate.”
Ministers also faced inquiries regarding why no action had been taken against Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, who authored an article for the Telegraph stating: “The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now.”
One Tory MP expressed confusion, stating: “What I can’t work out is why Suella hasn’t had the whip removed. She said it first.”
Another asserted: “Suella’s language has been irresponsible and inflammatory for years. She thinks she needs to reflect what she thinks is public opinion. Actually the British public are far more generous in spirit than she is … She is running in front of herds, polarizing opinion and providing the conditions for extremism on all sides to grow. Anderson is an idiot. She [Braverman] is causing harm.”
Warsi emphasized, “There will always be people who hide behind the word Zionist, people with a long history of antisemitism who use the term Zionist when they actually mean Jews. It’s a very disingenuous form of anti-Semitism. And there are always people with a long history of anti-Muslim racism who will hide behind the word Islamist when they actually mean Muslims.”
Former justice secretary Robert Buckland, the Tory MP for South Swindon, launched a scathing critique against Anderson, Braverman, and Liz Truss, stating that any Conservative politician aiming to stoke division “had better get out and join another party”.
Criticism also arose regarding the party’s failure to take action against Truss, the former prime minister, who recently participated in an interview with Steve Bannon, a former chief strategist to Donald Trump. Truss remained silent as Bannon praised the far-right figure Tommy Robinson as a “hero”.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, penned a letter to Sunak on Sunday, urging him to suspend Truss from the party. “If you do not take action you will be allowing the divisive, deluded and dangerous views of the far-right into mainstream British politics,” he asserted.
The Conservative Party remains divided over Anderson’s future and whether his controversial political approach aids the party in reaching socially conservative voters. Some Tory cabinet ministers indicated on Sunday that the door might be open for Anderson to return at a later time.
When questioned about his remarks, David TC Davies, the secretary of state for Wales, informed BBC Radio Wales: “Lee has made a good contribution to the Conservative party over the years, and I hope this issue is going to get sorted out.” He later expressed hope that Anderson “has got a good contribution to make and I hope he might return”.
Meanwhile, Dowden stated: “We gave him the opportunity to apologize. Of course, if he apologizes, we’d look at the nature of that and make a determination at that point. But that’s a matter for the chief whip.”
Centrist Conservative MPs are poised to resist any attempt to readmit Anderson, believing his provocative remarks alienate moderate voters. One senior Tory remarked, “I think it will be very difficult for the party to readmit Lee given the hard time we have given Labour on racism and discrimination. No.10 did the right thing by acting swiftly and decisively. We have to be clear what we stand for— we either stand up to racism in all its forms or we don’t.”
The Muslim Council of Britain, Britain’s largest Muslim body, called on the Conservative Party to conduct an investigation into alleged “structural Islamophobia” within its ranks.
In a letter to Tory chairman Richard Holden, MCB secretary general Zara Mohammed stated, “Our view is that the Islamophobia in the party is institutional, tolerated by the leadership, and seen as acceptable by great swathes of the party membership.”
The controversy emerged following Labour’s own crisis over antisemitism. The party initially supported its Rochdale by-election candidate, Azhar Ali, after he suggested Israel allowed the 7 October attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza, but withdrew support when it was revealed that Ali also blamed “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” for the suspension of another Labour MP.
